Film Friday is a weekly post in which an important film is taken, analyzed and reviewed. Best to have seen the film in question before reading these posts as there are spoilers.

When really important films with thought-provoking philosophical messages have their endings spoiled with their DVD cover I get quite upset. The example of this that always springs to mind is Planet of the Apes (1968):

Charlton Heston on his knees on the beach with the Statue of Liberty. Seriously? The big fucking twist at the end of the movie and you go with that for the damn DVD cover? Why not show off the amazing make-up? Or the spaceship at the beginning of the movie?

Besides the fact that it spoils the twist for everyone who hasn’t seen the movie, it also exposes and diminishes the impact to the climax to a story that explores the flaws of mankind and how technology and humanity’s libertarian ideologies are doomed to fail. The Apes with their feudal society have created order and stay within the strict confines of their territory. They have a strict caste system once seen by humanity earlier in its history. This by no means a perfect system, as this essay explores, but one thing it does do is provide us with a micro-society with which we can analyze the power structure of western human society. There are three species of ape that make up the societal structures within the planet of the apes; the gorillas, the orangutans, and the chimpanzees.

The gorillas, as the strongest and least intelligent primates of the film, represent the right-winged strong armed types who follow orders to enforce law and order. They ride horses, use guns to chase down and capture the feral non-speaking humans and are used as the ape’s soldiers and police. Gorillas riding horses provides some excellent imagery and is the first evidence in the film that we see the apes being dominant over humans. The domestication of animals was a huge turning point in the development of the human race, and by showing the audience that the apes have also done this, one of the things that has always separated man from beast, the film is asking what it means to be human: The domination and subsequent servitude of another species?

The gorillas, in short, represent the brutish and ugly side of humanity that advocates a ‘the strongest will survive’ mentality, which could be used to explain why one of the astronauts dies at the beginning of the film after being hit in the head; humanity is too brutal for its own good, and consequently destroys that which may be useful to it, e.g deforestation.

The orangutans are representative of the Establishment or ruling classes. Doctor Zaius is portrayed as an elderly ape that is wise sage and cunning. At the end of the film, he reveals that he knows the truth of the history of the Earth and humanity, which he has kept secret from the rest of the apes. He represents those that pull the strings in our society and work to pull the wool over our eyes; think of the few billionaire owners of the mainstream media and the agenda that they push forward with the news they have their outlets focus on and the direction of spin. Towards the end of the film, it is revealed that the other astronaut who survived has been lobotomised by Doctor Zaius as his very existence threatened the delicate balance of law and order that ape society enjoyed. The last thing the orangutans wanted was for someone to challenge the perception that humans could talk the same way as apes could, as they could lose control of the gorillas. This sounds awfully familiar to the current order of the world, the press is dominated by neo-liberal propaganda and arguments for a preservation of the status-quo.

The chimpanzees, the primate most similar to humans, represent those willing to adapt to change. When Taylor (Charlton Heston) reveals he can talk unlike the other humans, it is the chimpanzees that keep him a secret and work as vets that attempt to understand and study humans. They represent the side of humanity that is good, inquisitive, questioning, innovative and ultimately shat on by the orangutans and the gorillas, a metaphor for our own society. There is a reason that some fiction dreams of places where the chimpanzees in human society can just get on without having to deal with the gorillas disrupting at the behest of the orangutans. Think of Rapture in Bioshock; in theory, a place where the brightest minds of humanity can withdraw to get on with making society better without being held back by the brutal nature of humanity with its constant wars and petty squabbles. When applied, Rapture breaks down into anarchy and chaos due to the ultimately flawed human condition, ultimately greed and power is Rapture’s undoing, just as the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) explored how the planet of the apes meets its end.

In the pursuit of liberty, humanity is buried in the sand with the use of nuclear weapons, represented by the statue of liberty at the end of the film. This is why the DVD cover is frustrating; it is a great climax to a classic film that loses so much of its impact when one already knows that humanity ‘blew it all up.”

In conclusion, Planet of the Apes is a classic exploration into the question of what it means to be human and how the different types of personality within humanity mingle, mix and often jostle together.

A man stares vacantly ahead whilst his mother slathers his face with shaving cream. He flinches from a nick from the razor, “Keep still” his mother commands as she raps him on the head. Next shot and we see the man standing naked, whilst he is washed with a hose by his mother. When this film begins, you know pretty quickly that you’re watching something weird: kitchen sink setting, vacant absent-minded stares, slow-well-practised routines and then BAM! Mummy sex.

Bad Boy Bubby is one of those rare films that one feels total affinity and sympathy towards its main subject, which is unusual when considering how Bubby is so damn weird. When you watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vagas (1998) yes Johnny Depp’s Raoul Duke is a weird main character, but he’s also sane enough to know he’s mad.

Bubby staying still for fear of Jesus

With Bubby, the audience is taken from his birthplace- that grotty room with his mother- and out into the outside world. The world outside his room, Bubby has been told , is full of poisonous gas: “And if the poison doesn’t get you… God will.” After discovering this is a lie, Bubby leaves the room and encounters a confusing world. One where the performance of our everyday discourse is exactly that, a performance. A scene that comes to mind is the one in which Bubby enters a deli. A woman order some of “those ever-so fattening and delicious eclairs.” Bubby, seeing this, quite understandably concludes that this is the way to get other people to give you food. He goes to the counter and repeats the words of the woman before him who stops at the doorway and turns to look at him.

What makes this, and the other jokes like it in the film hilarious is that through mimicry, often the fabrication that the use of language creates, is often exposed. Hearing someone do a good impression is funny for the same reason that hearing a recording of one’s own voice makes people squeamish; it reveals the nuance of spoken discourse and lays bare the lie of the person that we all choose to present to the world and people around us.

Bubby, having lived in a room for thirty years has no concept of normative behaviour, having only ever known his abusive mother, which is what makes him such a great prism through which to examine and agitate our accepted societal norms. In essence, although difficult to watch, the first 20 minutes or so of the film in that dreadful room, are essential for laying the pretext out for the audience so that they understand why Bubby is so strange and unusual, which then leads to the much lighter and more watchable latter part of the film.

Religion

One of the famous scenes in the film is when a priest takes Bubby aside and launches into a monologue about how the world must, “will God out of existence, because only then can humanity begin to take responsibility for who we are.” As well as being an incredibly moving and poignant speech, is also fascinating that this speech comes from a priest. Religion is something that is used for different reasons by different characters in the film. Bubby’s mother, for example, has a tiny crucifix on one of her filthy bare walls. “Don’t move, or Jesus will get ya” she warns Bubby before she makes a trip outside. However, Bubby’s mother can hardly be considered to follow a religious lifestyle, as she engages in an incestuous and abusive relationship with her son. The choir girl whom Bubby encounters shortly after leaving his room uses religion to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle and Angel’s parents towards the end of the film use religion to shame and suppress their daughter. Overall, no one in the film uses religion as they typically “should” be doing, that is to pursue a holy and righteous lifestyle. This ties into the facades and illusions that we all choose to present to the world, with religion being one of the basis’s from which some people draw their identity.

Bubby’s musical performance are a highlight of the film

Final Thoughts

This is an incredibly rare and interesting film that explores that well-worn path of analysis of the human condition but takes this exploration in a totally unique and hilarious direction. If you’re a fan of cult films that may push you out of your comfort zone a bit, then this is definitely worth seeing.

The Caledonia is one of the true places in Liverpool. True, in the sense that the commercialised sheen that plagues so many pubs is happily absent here. The tables slightly sticky, the barmaid- ostensibly free from the scrutinising gaze of a manger, gazes passively at her phone, the musicians, whose warming guitars, flutes, and violins emanate from the corner of the room.

The couple, who sit with their newborn three week old son, haggard and pale from disrupted sleep patterns, speak cordially to the curious drunks about their baby, its weight more story than flesh.One of them shouts to no one in particular, “Babies are alright, just don’t go up to 3, pain in the arse.” The couple smile contritely and exchange a knowing look.

The Caledonia is largely the same since its recent decoration, but there are noticeable improvements. Gone are the beer matts that took up one of the walls and the dilapidated decoration, in is the smell of fresh paint and new pieces of artwork for sale: a wholly unoriginal drawing of Marlon Brando as the Godfather on sale for £100, is juxtaposed by an impressive Sydney Pollack imitation and a flattering black and white sketch of Ray Charles.

The musicians appear to be just playing for their own pleasure; according to the pub’s faux hap- dashed monthly schedule, there is no band playing tonight. They launch into a rip-roaring rendition of “Sunny Afternoon” by The Kinks and the pub’s drinkers revel in the song’s tale, told from the point of view of a tax-dodging, wife-abusing scoundrel, something which the owners of many of the aforementioned ‘chain pubs’ would possibly know something about (paying their chosen rate of tax or tormenting their wives, most are presumably guilty of at least one at the top of the corporate world).

When one goes to a Yates or a Weatherspoon’s on a Tuesday afternoon, a far bleaker picture can be seen. The bar staff always seem overworked, very serious and the pubs posses an industrial off-putting atmosphere that I can’t quite put my finger on. You can see the steam escape from dishwashers in backrooms, staff dedicated to collecting glasses and wiping down rows and rows of identical tables, leaving behind an unpleasing smell of cheap sterile disinfectant, smoking areas that seem a reluctant afterthought that entail the company of an overweight bouncer who looks appropriately depressed, holding the door open for you to dispel the monotony of his job of largely just standing there. All of these factors, alongside the once neatly laminated and now battered corporate food and drink menus, serve to put one in a position of unease because of the lack of authenticity, character and as cliche as its sounds, the absence of heart.

In the Caledonia, and the pubs of its ilk, one can expect to be drawn into a conversation, see the regulars ramble boorishly at patient barmaids and overhear conversations that indicate the patrons have more interesting lives and tales to tell of than their fellow drinkers down at the chain pubs. Not that chain pubs do not have their use: one sometimes finds that they need to ‘catch up’ quickly and cheaply with their chosen company for the evening’s expected drunkenness and debauchery, or that you find yourself stranded in town by the long walk home and require cheap frozen food to be reheated by the chain’s self-proclaimed ‘chef’. But aside from this, chain pubs should be ignored at all costs by the drinking public. A chain is not ‘the local’ because the decisions that drive its choice of drinks, events and decor, are made not in the backroom of the pub itself but rather in an office, probably a glass monolithic one, in which the every owned pub across the country adheres to roughly the same standards. The decisions are made based on the numbers, averages and projections rather than the far braver and pluckier independent pub owner’s intuition.